Christians Today Are Like Watermelons

“Elder, what are Christians like today?”

“Like watermelons, my child.”

With this simple remark, full of spiritual wit, an elder on Mount Athos expressed a profound truth about our times.

If you think about it, a watermelon is a fruit that can easily deceive you. On the outside, it is deep green and firm, and you see a beautiful, hard surface that gives you the impression that nothing can bend or break it.

So it is with many Christians today. They wear the “garment” of piety, know the right words, follow religious customs, and appear steadfast.

“Help Us To Love Our Enemies, Our Brothers and Sisters.”

At the Sacred Pilgrimage Cave Church of the Nativity of Saint John the Forerunner (Damialis, Crete), traditionally believed to have been built by Saint John the Xenos (10th century), where, according to the liturgical schedule of the shrine, Divine Liturgies and Parakleses are celebrated every month, with the commemoration of all the names that the many pilgrims record during their pilgrimage, His Eminence Metropolitan Amphilochios of Kissamos and Selinos celebrated the Paraklesis to Saint John the Forerunner on July 14th 2026.

At the conclusion of the Paraklesis, the His Eminence Metropolitan Amphilochios referred to one of the “For Health” prayer requests that had been recorded at the shrine during the month of July.

In this particular request, which was written in English, the person making the request asked God to keep his or her family “in Lebanon” safe and to grant them peace: “Keep them safe. Make peace.”

The next sentence of the prayer request was a prayer for the “enemies.”

It reads:

“Help us to love our enemies, our brothers and sisters.”

The Hidden Greatness of Greece

“Scattered across the surrounding hills and throughout the entire rural amphitheater are an astonishing number of churches.

The immeasurable depth of Orthodoxy, with the houses of God that you encounter everywhere in Greece, whether you make your way through the ravines and mountains or along the sea-washed shores of this maritime land, three-quarters of which is surrounded by the sea, where the people have always found the foundation of their spiritual truth: 'that you may know how one ought to conduct oneself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.'

Faith and language, peasant and fisherman or sailor—the two primordial, indestructible cells, bound together in the form of a cross, like the lion, the angel, the ox, and the eagle upon the Tetramorph, or again like the four primordial elements, those four so celebrated, inexhaustible sources, flowing abundantly through life and death, ever-flowing springs that sustain a people who are the guardians of one of the most wondrous religions and languages in the world. […]

Saint Kosmas the Aitolos and His Vision for the Greek Nation

By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos

Father Kosmas¹ is one of the best-known ecclesiastical figures of the pre-revolutionary period, even within the sphere of scholarly research,² although his activity and contribution do not primarily belong to the field of scholarship. This has been emphatically underscored by Professor Gerhard Podskalsky, who included Father Kosmas in one of his strictly scholarly works as the sole exception.

Sufficient evidence of his significance for the enslaved Nation is found in the laudatory words spoken about him by the German researcher himself: "An exceptionally popular missionary and teacher of the Nation." He was a characteristic example of a popular preacher who "possessed a religious piety foreign to academic theology" — "His sermons deeply moved the People both from a national and from a religious perspective" — and for this reason they were regarded as "subversive from a sociopolitical perspective."³ Indeed, it is a fact that, in the mouths of the People and in their Songs, the echo of the sermons of this great teacher of the Nation has been preserved.

Saint Kosmas the Aitolos: His Athonite Paschal Procession to the Enslaved

 

By Stelios Koukos

Every second day of Pascha, in the capital of the monastic state of Mount Athos, Karyes, the procession of the icon of the Axion Estin takes place. Following the morning Paschal services of Matins and the Divine Liturgy, celebrated in the magnificent Church of the Protaton, with its famous frescoes, shining like a full moon in its splendor, the great procession of the wonderworking icon of the Axion Estin is held.

The procession is led by the Greek flag, followed by the hieromonks and deacons, who cense the icon with their thuribles. The icon of the great noblewoman of Mount Athos is protected from the weather by a large umbrella, which also serves as an indication that she is a person worthy of great respect.

The chanters of the Protaton also participate in the entire procession, chanting Resurrection hymns throughout its course.

The icon is initially carried by hieromonks, then by monks, and toward the end of the procession, pilgrims from the world, and in our world, are also permitted to carry it as a blessing. In fact, the first year that I carried it myself, the icon had no weight. After several years, the friend with whom I had carried it together revealed to me that he had experienced the same thing. The second year, however, it had weight.

The Most Holy Theotokos as the Restoration of Fallen Adam and the Redemption of Eve (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

(Transcribed Sermon delivered at Vespers for the Leavetaking of the Feast in the Church of the Dormition of the Theotokos, Palaio-Panagia, August 22, 2025.)

We celebrate today as well, beloved fathers and brethren, most honorable rulers, the Leavetaking of the feast of the Most Holy Theotokos, specifically the feast of the Dormition of our Panagia, which is a very great feast of the Theotokos. We have the feasts that refer to Christ the Master, which are called the Despotic Feasts, and we also have the feasts that refer to the Most Holy Theotokos, which are called Theometoric Feasts.

Throughout this entire period, from August 1 until today, and tomorrow, when we will celebrate the services of Matins and the Divine Liturgy, we glorify the all-praised name and person of the Most Holy Theotokos. Every day in the holy churches we celebrate and chant the troparia — not only now, but throughout the entire year, with various feasts — and we clergy, the bishops and preachers, each time during the sacred service that we celebrate, try to contemplate some aspect of the personality of the Most Holy Theotokos. And I can say that we never tire of chanting the troparia for our Panagia and speaking about her.

If you consider it, other priests and clergy do this as well, but personally I have been speaking about our Panagia for more than fifty years. And because I have various archives and keep a record each time of what I say, I observe that only rarely do I repeat myself in sermons that I have given on other occasions. You understand, therefore, that our Panagia is a very great person. She is not simply, as we usually say, our mother who cares for us and loves us, but she has an enormously profound theological significance.

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday of Matthew (St. Cleopa of Sihastria)

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday of Matthew, 

or Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

On Christian Perfection

By St. Cleopa of Sihastria

“If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give them to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; afterward, come and follow Me” (Matthew 19:21).

Beloved faithful,

The ideal of every Christian on earth is the salvation of the soul, that is, the attainment of eternal life. Until the Incarnation and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, no one could be saved, for Paradise was closed and the grace of the Holy Spirit had not been poured out upon the world. Therefore, all the righteous of the Old Testament awaited the deliverance of their souls through the death and Resurrection of the Son of God.

Salvation, according to the teaching of the Holy Gospel and of the Orthodox Church, is attained through keeping the commandments given by God to mankind, contained both in the Decalogue of the Old Law and in the New Testament, which is also called the Law of Grace. Every Christian who desires to be saved must fulfill these three conditions: to have right faith in God; to possess the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is given to all through the seven Holy Mysteries of the Church — Baptism, Chrismation, Confession, Holy Communion, Marriage, Priesthood, and Holy Unction — and to fulfill the commandments contained in the Holy Gospel. Without these three obligatory conditions, there is no salvation. If even one of them is lacking, a person cannot be saved and loses his soul, “which is more precious than the whole world.”

Homily Two for the Twelfth Sunday of Matthew (St. John of Kronstadt)

Homily Two for the Twelfth Sunday of Matthew
(12th Sunday of Pentecost)

By St. John of Kronstadt

In today’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ addresses an important question put to Him by a rich young man: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The Lord directs him to the commandments given by God to mankind through Moses, specifically to the commandments concerning love of one’s neighbor, passing over the commandments concerning the Lord God Himself, undoubtedly because love for one’s neighbor is also the foundation of love for God, and without love for one’s neighbor it is impossible to love God. “For he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see?” (1 John 4:20), says the Holy Apostle John the Theologian. Thus the Lord says to the rich young man: “If you want to enter into eternal life, keep the commandments,” namely: “Do not kill; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; honor your father and mother; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Yes, the Lord resolves an important question for us in today’s Gospel: the question of how, and by what paths, we may attain eternal life. There is nothing more certain than death: we will all die, and our bodies will return to dust, to the earth from which they were originally created, while our immortal souls, created in the image and likeness of God, will be taken up to God for judgment. For “it is appointed for men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27), says the Apostle — the particular judgment of the soul of each person departing from this life. At this judgment a person’s fate is determined until the final universal judgment of the whole world following the resurrection of all the dead. Therefore, in view of the inevitability of bodily death for each one of us, it is exceedingly important and necessary for every one of us to resolve satisfactorily the question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

A Woman Wrapped in the Sun: 2026 Pastoral Encyclical for the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

A Woman Wrapped in the Sun
 
Pastoral Encyclical for the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos (2026)

Today we celebrate the great feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos, and we celebrate it with great splendor. Contributing to this is also the season of summer and the holidays, which provide an opportunity for physical rest and relaxation from the many activities of the winter. Thus, the feast of the Most Holy Theotokos, our Panagia, as we customarily call her, urges us to contemplate even more, as much as we are able with our limited capacities, the glory that surrounds her, the honor she possesses in our Church, but also the glory she possesses in the heavens.

Much has been written about the Most Holy Theotokos by the Fathers of the Church, who theologize about her, while the sacred hymnographers have also composed many hymns that we chant in honor of her glorious person, both concerning the work she accomplished through the birth of Christ and concerning her present state in the heavens, in the glory that Christ has bestowed upon her, as well as her intercessions on behalf of us all. Today I will interpret a vision that the Evangelist John saw and recorded in the sacred book of Revelation, which reveals her honor and her glory.